How to sell a franchise on the Internet: 3 best ways
There are many ways to sell a franchise over the Internet, but not all of them are worth your attention. In this article we will talk about the most effective of them.
Most often, the first franchisees are acquaintances or acquaintances of acquaintances, to establish contact with which is not difficult. Typical story: the company opens one or two franchising points, after which it has confidence in the model’s performance plus the desire to scale the business further. The main question at this stage is how to achieve a stream of targeted leads.
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Usually it happens that the level of the advertising budget is limited, so the option of involving a franchised broker disappears immediately. The work of intermediaries is not only expensive (up to 50-70% of the cost of franchises), but also does not guarantee a result. It is no secret that companies involved in packaging franchises and supporting franchised transactions are legally insured against possible claims and it will be practically impossible to ask them for the failure of the campaign. You can find out exactly what steps you need to take to independently package the franchise and prepare it for sale here.
Most companies sooner or later realize that the Internet is the best channel to search for potential franchises. The eyes are primarily directed to the corporate website. No one bothers to place information about the franchise in a separate section, describing all the benefits of working with the company and leaving contacts. But no matter how smartly and attractively a presentation is made, you need to drive traffic to a website or landing page, use SEO to get to the top of search queries and take any other actions to receive applications. But which of them will be the most effective?
1. Place a franchise in an electronic catalog
Catalogs are one of the most effective and popular tools for receiving applications with contacts of potential franchisees. The number of franchise catalogs is constantly growing, therefore, when choosing a site for placement, you need to look at the attendance of the portal, its popularity, presence / absence of companies that have already left the market and closed the franchise. The most famous franchise catalogs in Russia are Franshiza.ru, Beboss, topfranchise.
For potential buyers of franchises, electronic catalogs are convenient in that they allow you to compare several offers, ask the price, weigh the pros and cons. Accordingly, the proximity to competitors’ proposals, even indirect ones, means that the presentation of the franchise should be at least no worse, and preferably better, than other companies.
To form a positive opinion among buyers, you need to periodically update the franchise page in the catalog. Namely – to update financial data, update the number of network points, post news and promotions. It is also necessary to post reviews of several franchisees, which will reveal various aspects and benefits of cooperation with the company. Many portals allow you to supplement the franchise pages with thematic interviews or any expert materials on behalf of the company.
The main plus of directories is that placing in them is a rather passive option for receiving applications. In principle, you don’t have to think about how to attract leads to a franchise: even with an uninteresting offer of about 10-15 applications per month, you will almost certainly receive. Paid for six months or a year – and wait. This is a convenient option for independent work and in those cases when the entrepreneur does not yet have a large advertising and especially franchising departments. If you wish and the availability of financial opportunities, you can “cast fishing rods” in several directories at once, thereby increasing the number of leads.
At the same time, being placed in the catalog of franchises, you should already keep a certain level. You need to prescribe conversation scripts, the order and format of the conclusion of cooperation, and so on.
2. Set up contextual advertising
To increase the number of leads, many companies create a landing page with information about the franchise and set up ads on Yandex and Google on it. The advantages of contextual advertising are selectivity, accuracy, low cost of leads with a large number of them, the ability to target ads to a specific region …
But the results for companies are completely different. Some really get up to 5 leads per day, making one sale for 40-50 applications, which is considered a worthy result with a budget of up to 100 thousand rubles. On average, the price of one lead in contextual advertising on Google Adwords and Yandex Direct is 250-500 rubles. This level is considered normal for an understandable product. For specific industries, the bid price may exceed 800 and even 1000 rubles. For most companies, returns tend to be well below expectations. Often there are difficulties with…